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Hear about travel to Sudan as the Amateur Traveler talks to Nicolas Bori of the I Quit project about his journey through that remote African country. Nicolas visited Sudan on an overlanding truck that traversed Africa from south to north.

Sudan is not an average destination and the visa can be tricky. For one thing, Sudan requires an invitation letter from a local. In addition Nicolas found that the language barrier to be high and the tourism infrastructure to be undeveloped.

That being said Nicolas loved Sudan. They are few other tourists so he loved the authenticity of Sudan. They also have Egyptian style pyramids from the mixing of the Egyptian and Nubian cultures. He says, “The pyramids that I have seen there are different from the ones that we know in Gisa, but they are absolutely beautiful. They are a bit more pointy, a bit more narrow. But they’re in the middle of the desert, there’s nothing around. In Cairo you have all the city next to it. It’s very crowded. There’s a lot of tourism and there are a lot of people trying to sell you stuff. In this place where we saw the pyramids in Sudan there was only us. There were 10 people. It was very hot that day and a number of people went back to the bus and I was alone with my camera walking around these really really old pyramids.”

They started in Khartoum where the highlights included the camel market. “The market was full of camels, some I think were racing camels. The people were really friendly. It was in the middle of nowhere on the outskirts of Khartoum. Nicolas enjoyed the local market as well where he bought himself some local styled clothes.

Another highlight was the ferry from Sudan to Egypt across the great Lake Nasser / Lake Nubia. The ferry leaves once every 7 days. The ferry was full of people dressed in a great variety of clothing styles. The ferry takes 24 hours “inshallah” and was a true African experience.

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Very interesting show. We visited Russia in 2009, only getting as far as St Petersburg. Our tour group (Rick Steves) went from Helsinki to St Petersburg by train. We were told that when the train crossed the border, the dining car and restrooms would be locked, and we had to remain in our seats. Officials came through and collected entry cards and our passports. The train then got underway. We were in Russia, without passports! After a while the border cops brought back the passports, and amused themselves trying to pronounce our names, which they absolutely could not in most cases. My theory is that they gathered up the passports because they had no automatic readers and had to write everything down. St Petersburg is the most foreign place we’ve ever been. I can see that Asiatic Russia would be stranger still. We took a train back to Helsinki on our own after the tour ended. Getting back to Finland was almost like being home.